


safety nets

by mag003 (MMagpieMcCorkle)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archivist Sasha James, Attempt at Humor, Gen, Light Angst, Not Beta Read, Possession, References to Drugs, Stoner Elias Bouchard, a happier-ish au because i Cannot Handle canon :'), jonah's plans do NOT go according to keikaku (keikaku means plan)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23734615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMagpieMcCorkle/pseuds/mag003
Summary: Elias welcomes Sasha into her new position as Head Archivist. The truth about what it entails will come out eventually, and he dreads it.("Short" thing wherein Elias has an unwelcome guest who causes him migraines, and learns from the new Head Archivist, Sasha James, that you don't actually staple statements together. How wild. And Gertrude? Alive. Jonah is seething.)
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Kudos: 38





	safety nets

**Author's Note:**

> smashing two aus together -- Sasha the Archivist and Real Elias is still in control of his shit.
> 
> mention of vomit, migraines, weed, eye trauma. spoilers up until idk when (i've only finished season 1, myself, but i know of things).
> 
> implied past jonah!james/elias, implied elias/peter because elias makes bad decisions. peter and jon are mentioned but not enough to warrant tagging
> 
> this was (at least partly) inspired by other Original Elias works c:

Jonah's still not happy about the one being stuck, but this new development - a new Head Archivist taking over from the still-living Gertrude Robinson - digs under the old man's metaphorical skin. Elias, on the other hand, is beyond delighted. Mostly because he does like Sasha James a lot, thinks she's more than competent (even if she's, maybe, possibly, a little under-qualified, but what the hell, he took over from James-who-was-actually-Jonah when he was a filing clerk, and Martin lied tremendously on his CV, so it's all whatever really), but also because Jonah is annoyed, and even though it'll inevitably come back to bite him in the ass with another vomit-inducing migraine, it's worth it just to needle the body-hopping bitch some more.

"I think she's an excellent candidate, myself," he says quietly, seemingly alone in his office. "She's incredibly smart. _Competent_ \--"

Oh, at this Jonah rails against, trying yet again to wrest control from Elias and only succeeds in a cotton-stuffed-head feeling. Again. At least he's not vomited! The little victories.

"Well." Leave it at that, then. Get back to... paperwork. Ugh. If Elias really had a choice, he wouldn't be stuck doing this sort of job. Too much responsibility, even though he's been used to it now for the past... oh, nearly twenty years, now. Still dull.

 _But at least you don't **have** to go into Artefact Storage anymore_, Jonah leans in, and Elias can only begrudgingly agree. Sasha's probably relieved of the same thing. Creepy shit down there, and even borrowing from Jonah's Sight (sometimes to the point of an overload, _so much_ becoming _too much_ to bear witness to, the pain of Knowing with limits causing either another vomit-migraine or a total pass-out), Elias is still on edge whenever he so much as thinks about it.

"Indeed."

Now to actual, normal, boring work. Branches in mainland Europe, in America, all needing his attention. Whoop.

* * *

It's when Elias is showing Sasha her new office -- the _Archivist's_ office, and Elias feels guilty for the set-up of it all -- when Jonah leans in again with, _Peter's coming back soon_ , and Elias can't help the stupid grin that spills across his face. All things considered -- the wagers, the truth, the wondering if one day the Lukases will pull their patronage out of the Institute because they know that Jonah's only taking the proverbial backseat, the whole... Entities and Avatars thing that Elias is **_really_ **not keen on -- Elias likes Peter a whole lot, even if it's just to annoy the other man. And Elias can be very good at annoying people.

Sasha's polite enough to only give him a glance, her own smile, one found out of giddiness and apprehension at her new position in the Institute, now mixed with a tinge of confusion and curiosity. A little peek into her mind; she's a little nosy, and a little too close to the truth ( _one of the many people he has meetings with. he tends to get that smile just before he arrives._ ). Oh, she's (frighteningly) smart, a (scarily) keen eye, and an obvious choice for a lead archivist. Not quite on the same level as Gertrude, so he does wonder what Gertrude sees in her to have picked her out of all the others. For one thing, Sasha's not the _sacrifice others for the greater good_ type. _Not yet_ , Jonah murmurs almost quietly enough that Elias could mistake it for his own thought. He doesn't like the tone -- Jonah's warming up to the idea of Sasha being in charge instead of Jon.

"Ah, where was I--"

"This is where I'd be making sense of the statements." Something cheeky in her smile, now.

"Yes. Now--"

She falls into it easily enough, even when she despairs with a singular sigh over the absolute mess that Gertrude left behind. Elias is grinding his teeth silently over the inevitable reveal.

 _Heavy is the head that wears the crown_ , Jonah says in the silence of Elias' flat, all too smug.

"That's a penis joke."

_... What's your point?_

Elias gives up for the night, and has a smoke before bed.

* * *

"I've never pictured you as a cruising woman."

"No?"

The double-edge of what he'd just said hits him a second later, and he laughs like a woodpecker into the receiver, and Gertrude deigns to laugh a single note, quiet and subdued.

"No," he says, still giggling, "thought you'd be in this 'til you died." Jonah is quiet. Sulking, most likely. Elias hopes it's just that.

"Well, that almost happened, didn't it?"

Elias doesn't say anything to that. He's still agonizing over the gun kept in his drawer, what to do with it.

"I'd better get on," she says, while he's still in several minds (the gun, how he managed to keep her from setting fire to the Institute, why he can't actually remember it, _Peter_ ), "the... 'retirement life' won't wait for me." He has a feeling that she's not really quitting, that she'll keep taking down rituals, or at least tracking down the Entities' servants.

"Right." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "So long as you don't order any more explosives through the Institute." Elias mumbles something about undue attention from the police when Gertrude laughs over him.

"Well, I'll need to keep them on their toes, won't I?"

And that clicks something. A single Entity's ritual on its own won't ever come to fruition, will collapse under its own weight; it cannot be a lone thing in the world without its others and opposites so that there is something to fear. A tingle of memory -- is that what convinced Gertrude? It _feels_ right, and Jonah seems to nudge him in that same direction without even muttering anything. And there's something else, isn't there? A ritual for not just one of those primordial fears, but for all of them, and it-- it takes--

"--Elias?"

His head is pounding, his mouth is watering, but he has to know. He has to _Know_.

"What does it _fucking_ take," he hisses through grit teeth, "you _fucking_ body-hopper piece of _shit_?"

"Elias--"

Then his head is a steel ball hitting the floor. Elias doesn't pass the threshold from consciousness to enforced sleep, clinging to the desperate need to Know before it slips further out of reach. Reaching into his own head where a two-hundred-something-year-old servant of the Eye has dug in deep, despite his failing to take over completely, is worse than the migraines that Jonah springs on him when he makes a little jab at Jonah's mistake.

But Elias still _clings_ , the memory of his eyes being so precisely embedded forever, so he clings because it'll be the last failure he can allow himself to make, clings and digs and reaches deep, even when it seems to burn and clog his throat and warp him and--

A statement. Of sorts-- an incantation. Only to be written once--

Oh, his head is blinding, and blasted fucking noise is coming from some tinny thing--

\--Sasha was marked by all of the Entities.

And she has not been. Not yet.

Exhaustion, even with Jonah all but screaming inside his head to the point of vomiting, almost pushes him finally towards sleep. He crawls to his bathtub, phone in hand. Only once he's collapsed in the tub does he bring the phone back to his ear, and then Jonah silences himself, like a vacuum of noise. "Hey, Gert."

"I hate when you call me that."

He laughs, and nods with a quiet, "yeah," when she tells him goodnight.

Well, all he needs to do is not give Sasha the incantation, or trick her into it, and try to keep her from being marked by the Entities. The statements she'll go through will no doubt do so anyway, but the physical marks should be easier to avoid.

Should be.

* * *

The next working day, he asks Sasha about work. "Stapling all those statements together all neat and tidy?"

Oh, she gives him a look so bewildered. "I... don't staple statements together, Elias. That's not..." There, she trails off, and laughs a little.

Ah, well. Shit. "Of course! Just testing you."

Later, alone with Jonah, Elias mutters something about how surprising it is that even the founder of the Magnus Institute didn't know about not stapling statements together. Jonah threatens him with aneurysm. Elias purses his lips primly, and staples a collection of papers together, neat and tidy.

**Author's Note:**

> i have Feelings for posthumous characters, it seems, and that includes stoner boy original elias
> 
> also apologies if some of the details regarding certain things are a bit off (re: the ritual for all 14 entities), i've only finished season one and i know of all, if not most, spoilers, but i might not have the full details surrounding them. :') but i wanted to get this out of my system.
> 
> i might make this a series... i want to, but we'll see where my motivation goes haha


End file.
